All this conjecture from people who have not spent substantial time at sea.
Some even suggesting it’s a sign of the nation’s collapse.
Silly.
Ships at sea rust. All of them.
The amount of surface rust is proportional to contiguous days at sea.
“The amount of surface rust is proportional to contiguous days at sea.”
-And the extent to which deck division considers rust to be someone else’s job.
I don’t think that is a sign of the nation’s collapse. And if that was directed at me, I did not say so or infer that.
I did spend about two years total time at sea aboard a deployed vessel, and for most of my life growing up except for a few years here and there, and spent a great deal of time around the docks looking at ships. So those are my observations back to about 1960 or so, and even though I was a little kid, and the only ships I saw during that time frame that looked like that were civilian vessels.
But, they are my observations alone, and by no means constitute a full picture.
But I do believe that something is clearly amiss in the US Navy. The state of the vessel, the nature of the Fitzgerald and McCain collisions, and the recent Bon Homme Richard fire highlight that. It may be personnel, may be training, may be logistics, may be operational cycles, may be lack of money, and is probably all of them.